Colorful, vast and sneakingly hilarious
Wes Anderson is back with a stacked cast and a story set in a desert town post-WWII at a convention for students and parents from all across the country that gets interrupted by world-changing events.
Quite an ominous logline for a film that tells you most of its story and mystery (maybe even its jokes) in the first few minutes of the movie.
Wes Anderson seems to be confident that this gigantic ensemble of very Wes Anderson-like characters will carry this movie enough to make it enjoyable. And for the most part, it is, even if there are quite a few Anderson stereotypes that I don´t particularly enjoy, like in insistence on an additional framing device for his stories.
Because Asteroid City could have cut its nameworthy cast in half, focused on the family dynamics a bit more, and made this one of his best films yet. Don´t get me wrong though, Asteroid City is very good. It's hilarious and had me laugh throughout the entire runtime. It started to lose me a bit more in the 2nd half after a very strong opening and Parts 1 and 2 but ultimately I believe that Wes Anderson fans are gonna be pleased. It's a definite step up from the mess in The French Dispatch, even if this film is still quite messy.
The cast is huge, with Jason Schwartzman and Scarlett Johansson as the most lead-like characters, followed by Schwartzman´s kid, played by Jake Ryan.
as for the rest of the cast, from Adrien Brody, Tilda Swinton, Edward Norton, Willem Dafoe, Liev Schreiber, Maya Hawke to Margot Robbie. There's no real need for them at all in this story and ultimately makes the most dense cameo-fest I have ever seen. A lot of them feel like caricatures of Wes Anderson characters, which can be funny if there's one or two of them, but works a bit less when there are like a dozen.
Regardless, the humor and look are probably the film´s strongest virtues and I personally got a bit annoyed by the beep-like repetitive score. He's certainly one of the few filmmakers where I can tolerate that kind of soundscape.
Some of the back and forth between the frame device story of the film was actually really funny, Bryan Cranston nails that role, and the younger triplet sister pack was hilarious each time they were on strong